Kindra’s face was grim. Before I bore a daughter to live in the Dry Towns, captive, chained, she thought, I would lay hands on myself and the life within me, or strangle the babe as she came forth from my womb! But the women of the Domains are soft, cowards all! None of this showed in her voice, however, as she laid a hand on Rohana’s shoulder, saying quietly, “I thank you for telling me this, Lady. I did not understand. So our mission is not so much to rescue your kinswoman as to free her daughter; that is what she asked. Although, if Melora can be freed…”
“Well, my band and I are pledged to do all we can,” Kindra said, “and I think any of us would risk our lives to save a young girl from living chained. But for now, Lady, you will soon need all your strength, and there is neither courage nor wisdom in an empty belly; it is not fitting that I should lay commands on a Comynara, but will you not join my women now and finish your meal?”
Rohana’s smile wavered a little. Why, beyond her harsh words, she’s kind! She said aloud, “Before I joined you, mestra, I pledged myself to conduct myself in all ways as one of your band, and so I am bound to obey you.”
She went out of the tent, and Kindra, standing in the doorway, watched her take a place by the fire, and accept a plateful of the stewed meat and beans.
Kindra did not follow at once, but stood thinking of what lay ahead. If it came to Jalak’s ears that anyone of the Domains was in his city, he might be already on guard. Or would he so despise the Free Amazons that he would not trouble to guard against them? She should have insisted that the Lady Rohana dye her hair. If any spy of Jalak’s should see a redheaded Comyn woman … / never thought she would be witting to cut it.
Maybe courage is relative; for her, maybe it took as much courage to cut her hair as for me to draw knife on a foeman …
It is worth risk, to take a young maiden from Jalak’s hands, from chains to freedom.
… Or such freedom as any woman can have in the Domains.
Kindra raised her hand, in an automatic gesture, to her cropped, graying hair. She had not been born into the Guild of Free Amazons; she had come to it through a choice so painful that the memory still had power to make her lips tighten and her eyes grow grim and faraway. She looked at Rohana, sitting in the ring of Amazons around the fire, eating, and listening to the women talk. I was once very like her: soft, submissive to the only life I knew. I chose to free myself. Rohana chose otherwise. I do not pity her, either.
But Melora was given no choice…Nor her daughter.
She thought, dispassionately, that it was probably too late for Melora. There could not, after ten years in the Dry Towns, be much left for her. But there was evidently enough left, of what she had been, to spur her to an enormous effort to get freedom for her daughter. Kindra knew only a little of the telepathic powers of the Comyn; but she knew that for Melora to reach Lady Rohana, over such distance, after so long a separation, must have taken enormous and agonizing effort. For the first time, Kindra felt a moment of genuine sympathy for Melora. She had accepted captivity for herself rather than allow any more of her kinsmen to risk death by torture. But she would risk anything, to give her daughter a choice; so that her daughter would not live and die knowing nothing but the chained world, the slave world, of the Dry-Town women.
Lady Rohana did well to come to me. After so many years, no doubt, her Comyn kin wished Melora dead, wished to forget she dwelt in slavery, a reproach to them.
But that is why the Free Amazons exist, in the final analysis. So that every woman may, at least, know there is a choice for them … that if they accept the restrictions laid upon women, on Darkover, they may do so from choice and not because they cannot imagine anything else….